Articles

The Journey Home

What is Home to you? Is your home your castle? Or, are you like Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, searching to find your way back to Ithaca?

Highlighted in the news this month was the discovery of an ancient sarcophagus in Cyprus vividly painted with scenes of Homer's Epics, showing Odysseus, (Ulysses), navigating through extreme challenges and temptations, trying to get back after the Trojan War to his wife, his son, and his rightful place on Ithaca. Homer’s story in the Odyssey catalyses the reader in the deeply resonating search to return home. Through his stirring story, we discover the true nature of Home, illustrated by the adventures as metaphors for the ways life can throw curves at us. Homer’s Epics has withstood the test of time because every human understands the search for Home...home with a capital ‘H’.

My own search to understand the elements that make up a happy home has guided me in much the same way the search to return home guided Odysseus back to Ithaca. This first Designergy newsletter begins appropriately, I believe, with this topic of the journey Home because it is a topic very near and dear to me not only because my degree is in Interior Design, but also because Designergy™ was born out of a life long compelling search for the answer to the question, “What makes a home happy?”

Until recently, the home provided comfort and protection from the outside world. Homes were built around a circular hearth, in recognition of the center of the family life, in recognition of the warmth and nurturance provided by keeping the home fires burning. After WWII, American society took a new direction. There came an uplifting sense of freedom and confidence here America. Homes were built to reflect that movement towards expansiveness, more relaxed freedom, and more openness. Art and architecture reflected society’s shift away from inner protection towards focus of freedom by building such details as larger windows to capture more expansive views, and garages in front of the house to easily accommodate our increasingly mobile society. Families dispersed far and wide and there developed an increased focus on economic efficiency, taking us away from our hearth, taking us away from our center. Gone is the concept of family gathered together by the hearth.

Many of today’s homes reflect that shift with no real space for extended family and certainly no real use for hearth and fireplace at all. Homes are more energetically efficient, and are designed to expand outward, with the emphasis towards the outside world…. not on the inside sanctuary. Homes have lost their center, the focus towards inner life. Yet, today, people are asking for a place to live that carries ‘something more’….they want a home that feels like Home.

That longing, coupled with my own passion to discover what makes a warm and happy home, has taken me from study of design, to energy, to personality types, and even to mythology and the study of archetypes in order to more fully comprehend the true building blocks of Home.

What is Home for you? Where have we as a society missed out on this most important aspect of humanity in our focus on freedom?

Home was such a necessary requirement for survival in ancient societies, that royalty devoted the resources to study this concept intensely, raising the concept of Home to the status of art. The ancient Greek culture noted archetypal energies and patterns calling them ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’, and developed stories to serve as instruction, more as a means of passing down wisdom, rather than as a religion. Homer’s epics are a classic example of those stories.

Simultaneously, Ancient China asked the question, “What sustains longevity?”, and went on to identify and classify the energy patterns present in life, calling these inherent patterns by numbers and animals, thereby effectively avoiding the religious conundrum. Today their study is called Feng Shui.

Both these ideologies (and more), represent the basic building blocks of energy available for ourselves in our search for Home…. in order that we might all truly discover Heaven on Earth. Our environment impacts us more than we might ever suspect. Our outer world provides structures and hints at what is happening in our inner world….within our innermost beliefs that magnetize like to align with like. The wise ones of that early time period lead the discovery and guided the building of temples, castles, cities, and created entire civilizations thriving with awareness as a reflection of that wisdom. They left their discoveries for us through stories, philosophies, art, and laws of nature defined.

The way to Home, higher living with true power of awareness, and infinitely more joy, is to have greater clarity of the alignment of our outer world with our inner world. The tools to create that alignment I call Designergy, The Empowering Energy of Conscious Design.

It is through the studies of these cultural myths and archetypal energies in home, and within our very personas, coupled with experience in modern elements of design, and based on the search for the Divine in everyday life, that Designergy provides guidance. In the way that Athene * provided guidance for Odysseus to navigate through the challenges to return to Ithaca, Designergy provides support for your own unique adventure towards Home.

True freedom comes not from any external building or any object, but from the power to choose. Home is that constellation of qualities that provides you the space to find your center, the hearth of your soul, so that you might align with the power to choose with awareness.

Designergy helps you create that space in a three step process that works on every level of mind, body, soul and home by first identifying your goals; secondly, by guiding and supporting you in transforming the patterns, energies, and limiting beliefs which no longer serve, (in your environment and in your field of consciousness), and thirdly, by evoking the more noble qualities that benefit you with greater awareness in creating you own life's journey . By aligning with the higher concept of Home, we help you discover and enjoy your journey to Ithaca.

*Athene and Odysseus

Her love and protection of Odysseus permitted the long suffering hero to finally return home to his wife and son again. She would assume the shape of men (Odyssey, book 8, line 8), women (Odyssey, book 6, line 23) and children (Odyssey, book 7, line 20) to better serve as guide and protector of the resourceful Odysseus.

ITHACA: THE POEM

As you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithaca means.